Uic Troupe Works Way To Moscow

September 04, 1989|By Patricia M. Szymczak.

It took a long summer`s worth of fundraising, but a company of 18 drama students from the University of Illinois-Chicago boarded a Yugoslavian flight to Moscow on Saturday for the highlight of what has so far been an adventure of a lifetime.

No tourists here. These students will see Moscow, Leningrad and Kolomna over the next two weeks as working actors on a tour of the Circle Players`

production of ``The Dragon,`` a 1942 allegorical satire on totalitarianism by Russian playwright Yevgeny Shvarts.

``We`re probably going to be rehearsing 18 hours a day, but it`s worth it,`` said Timothy Griffin, an 18-year-old UIC sophomore who plays the villainous Burgomaster in the production.

The adventure began for Griffin and his classmates in the spring quarter when Valery Beliakovich, founder and director of the Studio Theater of Moscow Southwest, arrived at UIC as a guest artist. Having directed ``The Dragon`` in repertory at his theater since 1981-until then it had been banned in the Soviet Union-Beliakovich set to work casting the show here.

His Chicago student actors impressed him so much so that he invited Circle Players to perform ``The Dragon`` in Moscow.

Moreover, bookings were added at theaters in Lenningrad and Kolomna as a result of a protocol signed last year by the League of Chicago Theatres, to which UIC belongs, and the Union of Theater Workers of the Russian Federation. But though UIC`s Soviet hosts offered to pay hotel, meal and transportation costs within the Soviet Union, the students had to come up with about $1,100 apiece to get there and back.

So the fundraising began. In three months, Circle Players had banked nearly $15,000 in proceeds from a benefit performance, raffles and telephone solicitation of alumni and friends. The university and Chicago`s Department of Cultural Affairs topped off the pot, bringing the total to $21,000, according to Bill Raffeld, UIC theater director.